Currently, several personal financial management and bill payment systems are available to help a personal financial management and bill payment system user, or any authorized party acting on behalf of a personal financial management and bill payment system user, obtain financial transaction data representing financial transactions conducted by the user, process/analyze the financial transaction data, display categorized financial transaction data, generate financial transaction reports, generate bills due and payment due reports, and/or make manual, semi-automated, and/or automatic bill payments through the personal financial management and bill payment system.
Some personal financial management and bill payment systems help users manage their finances and/or track their expenditures/financial transactions by providing a centralized interface with banks, credit card companies, and various other financial institutions, for electronically identifying and categorizing the user's financial transaction data. Currently, personal financial management and bill payment systems typically obtain electronic financial transaction data, such as payee data, payment amount data, transaction date data, etc. via communication with banks, credit card providers, or other financial institutions, using electronic data transfer systems, or various other systems for obtaining/transferring financial transaction data.
Personal financial management and bill payment systems have proven to be very popular and valuable tools for the users of the personal financial management and bill payment systems. This is largely due to the fact that using a personal financial management and bill payment system, a user can obtain most, if not all, of their financial transaction data from multiple sources and this data can be processed and analyzed in its entirety to create in depth, and very complete reports and features. Some personal financial management and bill payment systems include a payment due report/display generation feature. Typically, a payment due report includes personal financial management and bill payment system payment due data representing a listing of payments due, e.g., bill payment due items, within a defined period of time, such as a month, which require the user's attention.
In some cases, the user of the personal financial management and bill payment system is also provided the capability to make the listed payments on a manual, semi-automatic, i.e., with user approval, or automatic, basis. Users of personal financial management and bill payment systems have come to rely on these payment due reports and often use the reports, and payment features, to pay the vast majority of their bills through the personal financial management and bill payment system. However, there remain several issues that are associated with currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems.
First, currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems do not provide a mechanism for automatically identifying, or distinguishing, invoices, invoice related financial transaction data, and/or invoice payments from bill payment data and then properly processing and integrating identified invoice related financial transaction data into the personal financial management and bill payment system as payment due items.
As used herein, the term “bill” includes, but is not limited to, an account statement or other potentially recurring cost and financial transaction. Currently, bill payments due are represented in personal financial management and bill payment system payment due data. Examples of bills include, but are not limited to: rent payments, utility payments, credit card payments, grocery store payments, vehicle costs, etc. bills are typically associated with larger, well known, and/or nationally or regionally known, payee businesses.
In contrast to the term “bill”, herein the term “invoice” includes, but is not limited to, documents/data associated with a specific product and/or service provided by a business and for which full payment is typically requested via a discrete invoice statement. Herein the term “invoice related financial transaction data” includes data representing all, or part of, an “invoice.” A given discrete invoice is therefore typically a non-recurring expense and/or is associated with specific products and/or services rendered, even though multiple, and even recurring identical, invoices can be generated by the same business for the same customer if multiple products and/or services, and/or the same products and/or services, are provided. Invoices are typically associated with smaller, regional or local, payee businesses than payee businesses associated with bills.
Herein the terms “payment,” and/or “payment due,” and/or “payment due items” are used interchangeably and include any payment owed by a first party, i.e., payor party, to a second party, i.e., a payee party. Consequently, as used herein, the terms “payment” and/or “payment due” include both “bills” and “invoices.”
One side effect of the popularity of payment due reports and the bill payment features offered through some personal financial management and bill payment systems is that any payment due items not included in the payment due reports, and/or not capable of being paid through the bill payment feature of the personal financial management and bill payment systems, are often forgotten, or at least treated as secondary, by the users of the personal financial management and bill payment systems. In short, as users of personal financial management and bill payment systems come to rely on the payment due reports listing payment due items and the bill payment features offered through some personal financial management and bill payment systems, they may forget, or neglect, any payments, such as invoice payments, that are not included in the payment due reports and payment due item listings and/or can't be paid through a bill payment feature of currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems.
This represents a significant and long standing technical problem in the financial management system, payment processing, and invoicing arts. This is because currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems process financial transaction data and generate personal financial management and bill payment system payment due data largely associated with recurring payments and/or revolving accounts, i.e., bills, such as credit card accounts, that can be identified through analysis of the users' financial transaction data history. In particular, currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems only identify recurring bills for inclusion in personal financial management and bill payment system payment due data and the payment due item listings of payment due reports, and/or other reminders of payments due, that are ultimately provided to the users of the personal financial management and bill payment systems. As a result, currently, one time only payments due, or non-revolving accounts, such as invoices, are almost never identified or included in the personal financial management and bill payment system payment due data and/or payment due item listings of payment due reports generated by personal financial management and bill payment systems.
As a result of the situation described above, smaller, local or regional, businesses generating invoices for their customers must currently rely on delivering their invoices to the customers through secondary, i.e., non-personal financial management and bill payment systems, mechanisms and/or processes such as e-mail or postal service. This, in turn, often leads to a situation where the invoicing business has trouble getting invoices in front of their customers, and/or getting their customers' attention, and/or integrating their invoices into the customers' payment routine, and/or getting paid. This situation exists today despite the fact that most businesses are business users of sophisticated business invoicing systems and/or business financial management systems that include business invoicing features.
Consequently, there is a long standing technical problem in the financial management system, payment processing, and invoicing arts in that businesses are currently unable to access personal financial management and bill payment systems used by their customers and provide invoices to their customers through the personal financial management and bill payment systems used by their customers as payment due items.
In addition, currently, users of bill payment features offered through a personal financial management and bill payment system can pay both bills and invoices, that is when the invoice related financial transaction data is entered, typically manually, by simply entering payee data, amount data, routing data, and payment date data, and, importantly, without indicating if a given payment is a payment associated with a bill or with an invoice. In addition, financial transaction data obtained by, or through, a personal financial management and bill payment system often includes financial transaction data representing financial transactions performed by, or on behalf, of a user through another entity such as another financial institution account. Often, this financial transaction data also fails to indicate whether a given payment is associated with a bill or with an invoice.
Consequently, users of personal financial management and bill payment systems can pay either bills or invoices without designating which type of payment is being made. This is unfortunate given the differences between “bills” and “invoices” in terms of how these two types of payments should ideally be identified, categorized, and processed by the personal financial management and bill payment system. In short, it would be very beneficial to identify any invoices and, once identified, provide a feature whereby identified invoices generated by a business invoicing system, and/or one or more financial institutions providing financial transaction data to the personal financial management and bill payment system, could be identified and then properly processed and integrated into the personal financial management and bill payment system as a payment due item.
As a result there is also a long standing technical problem in the financial management system, payment processing, and invoicing arts in that currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems do not provide a mechanism for automatically identifying, or distinguishing, invoices, invoice data, and/or invoice payments and then properly processing and integrating identified invoices into a personal financial management and bill payment system as a payment due item.
Another issue associated with currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems is that each time a discrete payment is made, or funds are otherwise transferred, through a personal financial management and bill payment system, a fee is typically charged by a financial institution providing the funds for the bill payment or funds transfer and/or the provider of the personal financial management and bill payment system. Consequently, it is highly desirable that a user of the personal financial management and bill payment system minimize the number of discrete payments made through the personal financial management and bill payment system.
However, since businesses are currently unable to access personal financial management and bill payment systems used by their customers and provide invoices to their customers through the personal financial management and bill payment systems used by their customers as payment due items, and currently available personal financial management and bill payment systems do not provide a mechanism for automatically identifying, or distinguishing, invoices, invoice related financial transaction data, and/or invoice payments or properly processing and integrating identified invoices into a personal financial management and bill payment system as a payment due item, invoices are either paid individually by mechanisms outside the personal financial management and bill payment system or, even if the invoice related financial transaction data is manually entered, or otherwise provided, to the personal financial management and bill payment system, or otherwise obtained, each discrete invoice is presented as a discrete payment due, and is paid individually, even when multiple invoices are directed to the same payor user by the same payee business. Consequently, currently, a user is typically charged for each discrete invoice paid even if each payment is made to the same payee business.
What is needed is a method and system for automatically integrating invoice related financial transaction data into a personal financial management and bill payment system and/or identifying, or distinguishing, invoice related financial transaction data, and then aggregating invoices represented in the invoice related financial transaction data having the same payor user and the same payee business into single payment due item. In this way, invoices represented in invoice related financial transaction data could be processed by the personal financial management and bill payment system at minimal cost to the user of the personal financial management and bill payment system, and in a seamless and effective manner.